Bing Search API pricing in 2026

Bing Search API prices from 2023 to 2026

Microsoft sold the Bing Search APIs in tiers set by transactions a second. On S1, based on an average of 250 a second, Bing Web Search cost $7 per 1,000 transactions until Microsoft raised every plan on May 1, 2023.

From that date S1 web search cost $25 per 1,000 transactions, and S1 image search went from $7 to $25 per 25,000. The Bing Statistics add-in went from $1 to $10 per 1,000, and use with a large language model was priced from $28 to $200 per 1,000 transactions. Microsoft cited its investments in Bing as the reason.

On August 11, 2025 Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs and closed sign-up. Its price list now has two lines: Grounding with Bing Search and Grounding with Bing Custom Search, each at $14 per 1,000 transactions.

What 1 million searches cost

At the 2023 S1 price, 1 million web searches cost $25,000. As Grounding with Bing Search transactions they cost $14,000, and Grounding stops at 1 million a day. Through SpecStream's v7 address they cost $1,000 for searches of up to 10 results, or $5,800 at count=50.

A SpecStream search takes its price from your balance as it runs. A call stopped by a 429 charges nothing, and with an Idempotency-Key header a retried call is charged once. Every rate is on the pricing page.

Check the price yourself

Send the v7 call your code sends today to SpecStream's address. Then ask the same question on GET /v1/web-search with speed=fast: its reply's price_usd is what the call cost, $0.001 for up to 10 results.

# The v7 call, at SpecStream's address
curl -G https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "q=When did Microsoft retire the Bing Search APIs?" -d count=10

# The price of one fast search, read from the reply
curl -G https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "q=When did Microsoft retire the Bing Search APIs?" \
  -d speed=fast | jq .price_usd

A Grounding transaction is a tool call your code never reads

Microsoft counts Grounding with Bing Search transactions by the number of tool calls per run. Each call hands the results to a model inside Azure AI Agents, and developers and end users don't have access to the raw content. A Bing integration that ranked or stored webPages.value[] gets nothing to read. SpecStream returns those results to your code, in the JSON it already parses, for any model or none.

The most accurate web search API in the world

SpecStream scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct), and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. Its Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Each score and its method is on the benchmarks page.

Search is the first call, and the same key does the rest

GET /v1/web-search returns up to 100 results for one search and an answer with the page it was read from. The Extract API reads up to 20 pages or documents a call at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, and a page with no text is not charged. Deep Search returns every match on the live web as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, with the most a run can cost quoted before it starts.

SpecStream

The live web data engine. It answers Bing's own /v7.0/search call in Bing's JSON at $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results. The same key reads pages for $0.80 per 1,000 and returns full datasets as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row.

Grounding with Bing Search

Microsoft's replacement: a tool inside Azure AI Agents at $14 per 1,000 transactions, with limits of 150 a second and 1 million a day. It returns a model's answer with citations, and developers don't get the raw results. The Grounding with Bing Search alternative page compares the two.

Grounding with Bing Custom Search

The same tool limited to the sites you choose, at $14 per 1,000 transactions. Its documentation sits under Agents (classic), which Microsoft says will be retired on March 31, 2027. On SpecStream, site: in q keeps a search to one site at $0.001.

Brave Search API

A search API at $5 per 1,000 requests, with $5 in free credits every month. Its reply has Brave's shape, so Bing code is rewritten for it. SpecStream answers the Bing call your code already sends, at $1 per 1,000.

Tavily

A search API for agents billed in credits, at $0.008 a credit pay as you go. SpecStream answers Tavily's call as well, at https://api.specstream.ai/tavily/search, for $0.001 a search.

Exa

A search API priced from $4 per 1,000 requests. Its reply has Exa's shape. SpecStream answers Exa's call at https://api.specstream.ai/exa/search and Bing's at https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search, on one key.